Recently, a botnet scheme effectively hijacked 120,000 residential PC's and cost advertisers millions of dollars in the process. The Chameleon botnet caused hacked computers to visit websites and simulate advertisement clicks, creating revenue for the website hosting the advertisements and subsequently costing advertisers approximately 69 cents per thousand clicks. This fraudulent activity is very costly to advertisers; botnets are compared to "victimless crimes" where naturally, there is no apparent victim, or the supposed victim may not notice that they are being taken advantage of in the process.
Analysis:
The usage of botnets is another scheme devised by hackers to take advantage of the cyber community. This fraudulent activity costs advertisers millions of dollars in fraudulent advertisement clicks. The botnet is well concealed, and hosts may be unaware that they are falling victim to this scheme because the infiltration mimics the cursor movements and mouse clicks. The real issue is how ad technology providers can protect themselves against schemes such as botnet infiltration. These attacks are similar to Denial of Service attacks and are very costly to companies that advertise on the internet. The usage of firewalls could have prevented botnets such as Chameleon from taking advantage of a compromised computer to perpetuate this fraudulent activity.
Recently, a botnet scheme effectively hijacked 120,000 residential PC's and cost advertisers millions of dollars in the process. The Chameleon botnet caused hacked computers to visit websites and simulate advertisement clicks, creating revenue for the website hosting the advertisements and subsequently costing advertisers approximately 69 cents per thousand clicks. This fraudulent activity is very costly to advertisers; botnets are compared to "victimless crimes" where naturally, there is no apparent victim, or the supposed victim may not notice that they are being taken advantage of in the process.
Analysis:
The usage of botnets is another scheme devised by hackers to take advantage of the cyber community. This fraudulent activity costs advertisers millions of dollars in fraudulent advertisement clicks. The botnet is well concealed, and hosts may be unaware that they are falling victim to this scheme because the infiltration mimics the cursor movements and mouse clicks. The real issue is how ad technology providers can protect themselves against schemes such as botnet infiltration. These attacks are similar to Denial of Service attacks and are very costly to companies that advertise on the internet. The usage of firewalls could have prevented botnets such as Chameleon from taking advantage of a compromised computer to perpetuate this fraudulent activity.